Poetry

Dear Competition Participants, Thank you for your submissions! I am pleased to announce the winner and honorable mentions of the 2012 Society of Classical Poets Poetry Competition: Winner of $1,000 Prize: Alan Nordstrom Honorable Mentions: Leland James James Ph. Kotsybar Damian Robin Keith Robson   Kind Regards, Evan Mantyk President...

How that florid scent Wafts through your two vents Making all your senses yield To wilderness in a field. How the petals soft Carry you aloft To the clouds above us all, Lightly float and never fall. How the colors beam In a matching scheme, Fine art in a museum...

Anand PKC’s “transcendental realism” is on view now through Feb. 27 at Walter Wickiser Gallery, Manhattan, NY.   Featured Image: A New Day Rising, Oil on canvas, 48" x 34", 2011

To Plait Celestial Chains They also serve who only stand and wait. - John Milton, “On his Blindness” They also serve who only stand and wait. Ere even days in this dark world and wide, small souls, or large, peek into this estate. Then side by side, their errand to...

Armor Discard the anxious sheath which guards The balanced song inside Lest ballads deep in ebony Reverberate untied Forgo the throttling winds who sing Their tainted, luring song Face every punch along the way, Distinguish truth from wrong A standing shaft knows not to sway Against the coming storm Its...

By Lew Icarus Bede             It is difficult, if not impossible, to know the state of poetry in any language during its "present period," poetry is such a fluid force, and the best, or the most enduring, works rarely ever rise immediately to the fore.  Therefore, it is doubly dangerous...

Mount Solitude Snow shelves sit like sentinels Waiting for a tuft-eared lynx Stacked like dishes jutting jewels Balance weights on tiny chinks Dripping in the sun all day Frozen stiff in lunar light Every ochre brown in play Moss and snow for green and white Painters’ knives have layered slices...

Spring’s Rhyme Colour floods so slowly, Each petal takes its time-- It blossoms near to holy As it enacts Spring’s Rhyme. The petals blush in summer And wither in the fall And wave to each newcomer Of their Garden Hall. One seems to blossom slower Than the rest as they...

PHOENIX—What does a rock formation in New Mexico have to do with an old abbey in France? It’s not the premise of a paperback novel, but a photography exhibit at Phoenix Art Museum. The rock formation, known as Shiprock, sharply juts out of the flat desert sands high as if...

My Love, Penelope My love, Penelope, I'm incomplete– You are not here, and I feel so alone; Love is a chore, without you there's no heat, Only dust, mere air, for you're my blood and bone. Victory brings me riches, glory and slaves, Each night a bacchanalia, all I've desired...

Death Be Not Proud Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure;...

Instead of Sominex Write a sonnet tonight before you go to bed. Just fourteen lines before you fall asleep. Something to clear your far-too-cluttered head. More fun than counting endless flocks of sheep. The clock will tick.  The steady, tireless tread of syllables across the page will keep your sonnet...

Quids Pro Quo Does beauty matter?  You, of all, know why: it skirts the edge of my and your decay. It brings at once both smile and knowing sigh. Yes, beauty—ever—has its own cachet. In beauty’s lap, perfection likely seems— redeems lost Eden, sheds the rose’s thorns, lets us believe...

On Cancer, Guns, and Hit 'n Runs The chemo sessions wore him down, He so despised the sterile smells, The chatter, beeps, and flimsy gown, And then those plain disgusting gels. But no more thoughts of days gone by, Of chances lost, of things begun, And multitud'nous reasons why Some...

  "every where the trace of men"                         —William Cullen Bryant In Thomas Cole's The Catskills and Lake George, that set on scenic Catskill Creek, New York, in 1845, trees are orange, dark and light green, and reddish brown; they form a core with large, gray rocks around the calm,...

Dogfight Sonnet Demon snarl curdles into a roar doubled with the counter-howl of defense. Darkened winter street was quiet before that tired walker’s leash-beast lost its sense. The guard dog growls, holds his ground upon sight; quivering mutt against great yellow Lab. The hoarse barking claws at a hard black...

All Such Poets Emit Great Delight. All such poets emit great delight. In such darkness they radiate light. Though despite the demise, They continue to rise. All such poets continue to write!   In Soul Sleeps Love, in Newborn Slumber Bay In soul sleeps love, in newborn, slumber bay. Thou...

Alabaster (The Statue) I see the fineness And sense divineness From smoothest feet to marble brow A curve of lip A tilt of hip As gentle as a tempest would allow A stolen glance A lover’s trance Time holds the flowers in your hair A shy unease The world to...

A meeting round a social platter Seduced me in a human game. I sensed the moral tone go flatter But did not put this in the frame. We are here and witness change. If firm, we help to rearrange The running sequences that matter, Make goods beyond the surface range....

Apprenticeship The poem will prove a stern and daunting master to those who pussyfoot around the truth and, weaving daisy chains from each disaster, still fixate on their gold and glittering youth. If you strive to disguise your fears and faults, pretend that you are not long in the tooth,...

NEW YORK—Studio Incamminati, a school for contemporary realist painters, celebrated their 10th anniversary at The National Arts Club in Manhattan on Jan. 11 with a painting demonstration and exhibition. Six of their senior artists, all teaching fellows at the studio, painted a live model using different techniques as an audience...

I hear you in the silence of the trees The Wilderness, they called it once, found in many places. Walking now, my heart sees the past, time before this darkened ground rang with battle, ran with blood. Monuments now mark what happened then. At sunset figures walk these fields anew....

I. It's not an easy thing to die, it's not An easy thing to make believe I cling To hope when every day my doctors bring Me proof how sick my body is.  Yet what Can doctors do, but sigh?  There's not a lot Of time till winter reigns, for...

English poetry has been in existence for at least 1,400 years. This tradition continues alive and well at The Society of Classical Poets like nowhere else. Today, poetry is everywhere. It is in the songs on the radio, in our national anthems, and in the fight songs of our favorite...

The Dream I dreamed a dream of two parades so different, yet the same, And I could not place the meaning of the first parade that came. Along a road lined with many leafless and grey, dying trees A black parade moved slowly forward trailing grief and unease. Soft silence...

Feathers of Disenchantment Pastors preached of birds as models of love, so sweet, so proper. Then parbleu, we heard sad news about the cheating of the dove, promiscuity of the humming-bird, scandalous divorce among flamingos, sparrows’ shacking in ménages à trois. For swingers on the wing any fling goes, the...

Review By Christopher Nield / Image by Liza Voronin/The Epoch Times The Riddles of Merlin As I was walking Alone by the sea, “What is that whisper?” Said Merlin to me. “Only,” I answered, “The sigh of the wave”— “Oh, no,” replied Merlin, “’Tis the grass on your grave.” As...

In Praise of Formal Poetry Whether it’s ridiculous or sublime, we need the reassurance of meter, the familiar recurrence of rhyme. We yearn for verse that’s fixed in place and time, lines that march to a regular beat, or words, whether ridiculous or sublime, that echo each other like bells...

The roses clamored wildly. I confessed it, smiled mildly. Profusely rambling everywhere, The crimson blooms were sweetness rare. Entwined with random opulence Around the old white picket fence, 'Twas glorious disobedience, Quite like the charm of innocence. While I walked the path one day, Two passers-by did stop and say:...

Bless with Children Sent, Amen! to fill the world with wonder they come in trust, brim-full of possibility, a soul (or spark from God, once split asunder) harbored in each.  Our responsibility: to do our best, to cherish and provide at least the abc’s that foster health for every body,...

To the Skeptic Who Denies God You want me to prove to you my God exists. “The burden of proof is on you,” you insist; But when my lips open, you only resist. You try to use logic to tear me apart; You pull out your jargon to get a...

Featured Image: “Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” circa 1570, by Paolo Veronese, oil on canvas, bequest of John Ringling to his museum in 1936. (Courtesy of The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art) SARASOTA, Fla.—Picture walking down a path that takes you past beautiful banyan trees toward a...

There is no battle like the break of light And yet the world still sleeps, still unaware, And day has yet to break the silent air While lamplight dimly wrestles with the night. The cold still lurks and clings to dampened grass The leaves still shiver where the night winds...

Birth Yes, I recall that January night when, ushered from your room into the hall, and restless for the nurse’s slightest call, I reread dated news by night-dimmed light, and listened for your voice into the night, and traced the jagged lines that marred the wall, and knew for once...

Sunset Daylight shines with the glow of the first morn Glittering rays of laughter soft and warm There's no end to this heaven you've known Until the day you find shadows have grown You're forced to face the facts and realize That even the sun sets in paradise Daylight trembles,...

Ars Poetica for Shaky Times       (Apologies to Auden and Horace) This little poem is in sonnet form; a poet will need support from the past: the best way to find it will be at last to compose within a poetic norm – limited available words will swarm to...

Structured Verse Is structured verse so surely dead? Has it nothing left to say? Have the rhyme and rhythm petered out Somewhere along the way? Have feet marched off to glory's end? Have the syllables this day Been recounted for the one last time And then been packed away? The...

Up in the inky, velvet sky on this cold winter night the sky is lit with diamond chips that glow with spirit light. Not far away from twinkling stars a full moon brightly shines sending down its silvery rays that light up snowy pines. Sleeping trees wear ermine robes provided...

. Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti        Morning and eveningMaids heard the goblins cry:'Come buy our orchard fruits,Come buy, come buy:Apples and quinces,Lemons and oranges,Plump unpecked cherries,Melons and raspberries,Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries,Crab-apples, dewberries,Pine-apples, blackberries,Apricots, strawberries;—All ripe togetherIn summer weather,—Morns that pass by,Fair eves that fly;Come buy, come buy:Our grapes fresh from...

This poem shows three Achaean perspectives on three characters from Homer's Iliad, each from an individual point of view.  That individuality is one of most important bequests of classical Greece.   I. Achilles in the Tent I am just so infuriated that I cannot stand it. Such ineptitude. Old Agamemnon's...